


Of The Meeting of Ar-Zimraphel With Círdan The Shipwright By The Isle Of Himring And Her Departure To Aman

by Ancalimë (Cymbidia)



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Post-Downfall of Númenor, mermaid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-19 17:07:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14241915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cymbidia/pseuds/Ancalim%C3%AB
Summary: Círdan sees a familiar face as he is rowing away from a visit to the Isle of Himring. Ar-Zimraphel gives him a few messages to pass on, reveals the fate of the Faithful of Númenor, and swims away into the West.





	Of The Meeting of Ar-Zimraphel With Círdan The Shipwright By The Isle Of Himring And Her Departure To Aman

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Legendarium Ladies April, picture prompt: "my heart travels in the splendour of the endlessly running skies" - I liked the colour palette and I also liked the sense of openness but when I opened the word document to write about Ancalime in the Countryside instead what came out was Miriel in The Sea????? And then I had an image of a parting under the sunset and over the wide waters and...? somehow the mermaid headcanons I had for Miriel reared up and here we are.  
> It's a bit late but I got pretty attached to the thing so I finished it up and posted it anyways.

Círdan was rowing back to his ship from an ill conceived visit to the last mound of Beleriand when he saw one of the sea-folk swimming towards him. The shape was come at him with the setting sun behind it, a glowing jewel lit by the radiance of Arien’s light. He changed course, and rowed towards the approaching figure. Would it be one of the sea-maiar, or even the Sea Lord himself? Or would it be one of their new charges, the elusive merfolk of the Secondborn?

But when the figure came to him and swept back the seaweed-tangle of hair floating in her face, Círdan realised with a start that he knew the creature.

“Tar-Míriel! Lady! How have you come to be in this shape and guise?” Círdan cried, startled.

“I am Ar-Zimraphel,” she said, swishing her tail and swimming in lazy circles. “And I and all the Faithful of Númenor live now under the protection of Lady Uinen, and so occupy guises such as these, until the day that we leave her embrace for the shores and the doom of the Secondborn.”

“Lady,” said Círdan, stroking his sad Elven excuse for a beard. It seemed that her transformation bewildered him, so he settled upon a less foreign subject of conversation. “Surely you still rule your people. Will you not take your rightful royal name?”

Ar-Zimraphel twirled around in the water, and swished her gleaming pearlescent tail. “I was not given the gift of forgiveness by being the Queen of Númenor,” she said. She did a figure of eight and splashed Círdan’s canoe with her tail, as if agitated. The merfolk of the sea of Númenor communicated as much by body language as they did by speech. Sound carried differently underwater, after all, and Osanwë was not quite so easy for the Secondborn, even changed as the folk of Númenor were. Ar-Zimraphel circled Círdan’s canoe a few times, then leapt with surprising nimbleness over the canoe, like a dolphin or a stingray. “Give uncle Elrond my love and gratitude,” she said after several more agitated laps around the canoe. “And tell Elendil that he has my blessing and forgiveness. I am not so young as I once were. Soon, I will swim the path that you Elves sail, and I will lie down upon the shores of the blessed country and join my idiot husband in death. Or awaiting, if that is indeed his fate.” She did a barrel roll in the water, the shape of her light and nimble and joyful despite the scars on her skin and the wrinkles on her face. Luminous were her scales beneath the vast pinks and oranges of the setting sun, and she looked not so much like a mortal woman or even the distant offspring of an Elf as much as she resembled a Maia, perhaps one of the schools of lesser water spirits that trailed after Uinen and Ossë and the rest, joyful and swift spirited, or one of Aulë’s folk, glowing with fire from each of her many-faceted body, a graceful tongue of glittering fire.

Ar-Zimraphel eventually stilled in the water, and looked at Círdan with her unsettling, fish-like eyes. They were dark and shallow and huge, and reflected the glow of the bloody sky. “Farewell now, Círdan the Shipwright, and thank you for listening to the last requests of an old woman. I shall go now to my doom, and to my gift. The Isle of Gift Númenor was, yet its sinking did not take away the gift bestowed. Nay, it is a greater gift still that which our lady Uinen has given us. I go gladly, and one day when you go also to Aman, then the last of the children of Númenor under the sea shall go with you. So it has been foretold, Círdan the Shipwright. Heavy days lie before you now, dark fates that touch us no longer under these waters, and I wish you victory and strength. Take heart, my lord, for the next Age of the Sun shall not be so long as the last, and in the reckoning of the Eldar your labours shall be over ere long! Fare well, fare well!”

Círdan bowed his head. “Your messages shall be delivered, Lady,” said he. “And I wish you a fair journey. Greet those glittering shores for me, if you shall, perhaps then the sea-longing might lessen in my heart.”

“I shall,” answered Ar-Zimraphel. “I shall greet those shores, and I shall leave the refuge of Uinen’s protection, and I shall face my doom! To the west, to the west! To my Gift and Doom!”

And with that, Ar-Zimraphel, last of the House of Elros of Númenor twisted in the water and swam away out to the forbidden depths of the Sundering Sea. She made straight for the setting sun, and the stretch of her shadow cut across the red glow of the Sun upon the waters as if she had pierced the very light of Arien.

Círdan watched her go til she was out of the sight of even his keen elven eyes, sitting still in his canoe until the day faded and the stars began to glitter in the open sky. He murmured a prayer to Varda for the sake of the last Queen of Númenor, then rowed back to his ship and made for his city upon the shore.


End file.
